Category: Epistles – Is his letter to our church?

Epistle of Paul to the Romans

Epistles ἐπιστολή or Letters

I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read to all the holy brethren.

Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians

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1 CORINTHIANS

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Letters – Is he writing to me?
The short answer: YES.

In their epistles or 1st century church letters the Apostles and other men sent out by Jesus build up the saints [small – ‘s’] or members of local first century churches.

A Disciple or other witness of JESUS would write it. Messengers then delivered these church letters to many isolated worshipers.

Followers of Jesus Christ receive these letters as a major encouragement to their personal faith. Then leaders read them to worshipers of their church.

Although the Epistles 0r Letters to the Church were originally written to churches of the first century,

Romans through Jude will seem like letters to your 21st century church.

What do Peter, Paul, John and others tell us we must do?
Is he talking about an issue in your 21st c. church as well?
How does the writer’s advice, warning, or encouragement to the 1st c. believers apply to you as well
Is the writer of this letter talking about something you need to address in your 21st century ‘christian’ life?

Contemporary Application of the Letters (Epistles)

Most New Testament writers take on specific issues confronting faithful followers of Jesus Christ. These same issues continue to confront believers until the Lord’s coming again in these last days.

Certainly Christ our Lord will come again to those God has chosen for eternal life.

Believers currently suffer more than most of you who know Christ in your local church can imagine.

In other lands Christians continue to suffer by the hand of the ungodly.
Go into all the world

A 21st century Common Era church can see and hear nearly any atrocity of man or artificial imagination of sinful man’s mind, yet ‘christians‘ dare not speak of any absolute truth of the Lord God or talk of JESUS CHRIST.

Will YOU comment on Scripture and share the Gospel?

I invite you to read the inspired word of Scripture written in these LETTERS TO THE CHURCH.

YES, He IS writing to YOU.

Beloved brother or sister in Christ Jesus,

Will you read this ‘CHURCH LETTER’ and talk of JESUS through your comment, sharing and email to me about this ‘Letter to you?”

Roger@talkofJesus.com

What do I do with this? – Grace

‘Grace’ is a continuation from the ‘Law.’

The Law convicts us of our sinfulness.

Some leaders of God’s people and teachers of God’s word use the Law to convict ALL of our sinfulness. (And well they should; for who among us is without sin?) Yet those who have no regard for GOD have no regard for the Law of God.

Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? – John 8:46

Pharisees asked Jesus questions in many attempts to convict the Son of God of sin. Yet only Jesus Christ lived a life without sin.

What about the rest of us? Who can God accept as sinless?

God’s answer to our conviction by the Law is the redeeming grace of the sacrifice of Christ.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 KJV

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

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Do we use scripture like the Pharisees to convict only? Or unlike most men, do we not only convict ourselves and others of our sin but also show how God has forgiven our sins?

Are YOU a sinner? (I sin.) Then we need mercy or we cannot live in the love of a Perfect loving God. We are unable to live a Christ-like life. We are sinners forgiven.

God instructs us in scripture to make us more God-like, a more perfect image of Him. God instructs us through scripture just like a loving father teaching his beloved children. Even the Law of the Father is foundation to the instruction of the obedient child, yet a loving father instructs also in our failings.

What father does not teach and rebuke his own sons and daughters? What father does not correct and instruct his own children in the righteousness of more abundant life?

Instruction is the whole training of a child (or adult); not just in school, not just by a teacher, not only by our parents. Correction by our heavenly Father is a redirection back to the Law and the will of our Father who loves us dearly.

Instruction by God is given in scripture for all who would be children of the Living God.

We are convicted in the heart: I am a terrible sinner, always turning from the ways my loving Father intends. We need God’s fatherly love even though we reject our Father’s instruction of scripture.

Can you see the love and compassion of our heavenly Father in sending the loving Son, Christ Jesus, to the Cross to pay the price of your sin and of mine?

God our Father has shone us not only mercy for our sins, but His grace of abundant love and eternal life.

What is grace? It is favor and acceptance we do NOT deserve. We are more than accepted by God our Father; we are loved in the fullness of His grace.

Who would not desire the kindness, the compassion, the gentleness of Jesus?

Would all mankind not be more god-like if only we would mirror the image of Jesus?

We sin. We break the Law. We trespass to that place where we do not belong in God’s will. What should we expect? Punishment.

What if we are caught (by the living God who knows all things)? What if we will come to His judgment at the last day or at the day of our inevitable death? What will GOD have to do to cover our sin we sometimes try so hard to hide from others?

What if our eternal soul must suffer for our mortal sins of this brief, measured life? What does the Law require?

GOD did not require grace for you or for me. God required a price to be paid for your sin and for mine. By His own love God paid the Court of Judgment everything just for the love of your soul.

For the love of our souls Christ died on the Cross that we might have eternal grace and unending love.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. – Hebrews 4:16

For the sake of Christ’s love, God’s very mercy sacrificed for you, accept the reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness by our heavenly Father; for your soul is sought by His eternal and overflowing love for you and for me.

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love. 2 John 1:3

June 11, 2015
What do I do with this?

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

– 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV

Daily we must remind ourselves that God IS. Daily we must recall that Jesus not only died on the cross for our sins (and oh so many of them), but that Christ rose from death in the body and spirit and Christ Jesus IS. Daily we must seek relationship between our living spirit breathed into us by God with the Holy Spirit sent to us as our counselor by Jesus. The Holy Spirit of the Living God near to our soul, IS.

All of this seems well and good as we carry our Bibles into a worship service or open the Bible in the privacy of our homes. Yet once we return from worship or Bible study we encounter the woes and trials of everyday life, the challenges of everyday relationships.

Don’t we ever-so-briefly ask of our Bible verses and stories: “What do I do with this?”

“All Scripture is God-breathed” or “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” or “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

We know it. God said it. But what do we do with it?

Think of our everyday life as a brief journey to a place of which we have only dreamed.

How do I get there? (I don’t even truly know where I am now?)

I know God wants me in a different place today than where I failed so miserably in sin yesterday. I am lost and have no GPS. In fact, once I leave church or the security of home (though I know this place is a brief shelter for this breathing, decaying flesh of mine), I not only have not sense of God’s direction, I can not even find weak signal of God’s voice speaking direction into my daily life.

Genesis 12:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

⁴So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Just suppose you have retired comfortably in your hometown or near to your family and making an amazing promise, GOD asks you to just pick up and move. Will you go?

I have little understanding of Abram and his lifestyle millennia ago. Yet what same application do I see to my own life when it seems everything must change from how I have always seen my life?

Everything must go forward in some new direction. How do I get there? Who will help me along the way? What will I find in this new place? I am blind to any knowledge of the challenges ahead, the place where I will go and what I will do when I get there. (And what does Abram have to do with me in this fast-paced life even two millennia after the Cross of Christ?)

Again scripture provides an answer and encourages us to apply scripture to our every day life.

Galatians 3:4-6 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

Sure, I can teach someone scripture or sit under some teaching to the church which I like; but can I apply to the lesson of my life the Voice of the Lord’s Spoken Word?

If God asks me to leave everything behind for the unseen promise of hope, will I have the faith of Abraham to hear and obey the voice of the LORD?

How many times has the LORD asked you to do something after you were in the comfortable place?

Or again, how many times have your own misguided plans brought you to your knees before the LORD asking, ‘Where did I go wrong? What do I do now… Lord? Where do I go with this? Show me the way… please… Lord?’

And ALL is silent… No answer. And again we cry out to the LORD.

And the Lord is faithful in His answer. Yet we do not like it. It is not the ‘comfort’ we expected. In fact, it makes us even more uncomfortable and will require even more faith than we believe possible – faith to ‘believe God’ and have it counted as righteousness.

What next? (Isn’t that always the question from the comfortable place or the house of desperation?) What next, Lord?

To be continued…

May 4, 2015
And you, who once were alienated

Colossians 1: NKJV ²¹And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled ²²in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—

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Jesus Christ! Friend or foe?

No other Name evokes such controversy and alienation: not Muhammad, not Buddha, not Obama, not Putin. The world, your workplace, our government: all oppose any suggestion that Christ Jesus IS Lord; that the Lord will judge sinners, that we are created once to die once, to be raised to the judgment and accountability for our sins against our fellow man and enmity against God.

Wicked works of our daily lives, evil ideas conceived for our advantage over others, evil efforts to bring pleasure at the expense of others – all are rebellious against ANY man or ANY god being Lord over us.

We must be in charge of our own destiny. And so we are; for we have choice between the passions of these evil days, with eternal punishment after death, or accepting Jesus Christ as Lord to serve God in exchange for His righteousness leading to eternal life by His grace.

Before the Lord mercifully called you to peace of your soul and invitation to worship in the body of believers, were you not indignant that Jesus could command you to NOT do those things you have always done, that Jesus could command you to action of love when you would easily ignore the need of another?

How wicked are our works and deceitful our hearts. Yet by grace we are saved to His love, the love of Christ Jesus in place of the things of this perishing world and pursuits of this decaying flesh.

Psalm 36

How Precious Is Your Steadfast Love

To the choirmaster. Of David, the servant of the Lord.

Transgression [rebellion] speaks to the wicked
    deep in his heart;
there is no fear of God
    before his eyes.
²For he flatters himself in his own eyes
    that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
³The words of his mouth are trouble [iniquity] and deceit;
    he has ceased to act wisely and do good.
⁴He plots trouble while on his bed;
    he sets himself in a way that is not good;
    he does not reject evil.

⁵Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
    your faithfulness to the clouds.

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By contrast to our evil, sinful nature, the Lord is good, full of steadfast love. The Lord is faithful, but we are not.

The NKJV [v.4] says of the wicked: He does not abhor evil. Christians know this to be true of all who surround us in our workplace, where we dine, shop, and are entertained in spectator sports or even casual observation of those all around us. Do you abhor evil? Or has the world convinced you to ‘tolerate’ evil, even in the holy worship place and communion of our Lord?

Do not hate evil with hatred, but abhor evil with the love of Jesus which also called you to repentance for your sins.

And lest we paint ourselves into a sanctuary of perceived righteousness apart from Christ, let us recall with humility the mercy God has already shown us, miserable sinners in His sight.

Romans 2

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. ²We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. ³Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? ⁴Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

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Do you rant and rail against abortion, bold christian, while condoning your teens having intercourse before marriage?

Do you shout out about marriage between one man and one woman, while divorcing your Christian husband or wife to whom you have made your vows before God?

Our righteousness is only in Christ Jesus. If He is our Lord, our Lord commands us to be merciful to others, as He has shown us much mercy. Surly our Lord requires continued patience with you and with me, grace for the reshaping of our repentant hearts into the clay of His love.

The witness of Christ, passed on in truth and in love by His Apostles continues in all the generations until the Lord returns again. Paul and Timothy write in their letter to the church at Colossae:

Colossians 1: ESV [NKJV]

³We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, ⁵because of the hope laid up for you in heaven…

¹³He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

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Paul writes to the church of the transformation which takes place that makes believers in Christ Jesus different from the world. The Apostle Paul cautions continued faithfulness in believers, that we might not fall back into our former sinful and wicked ways so evident in those worldly enemies of Christ around us.

[NKJV] ²³if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

For how did Paul precede this caution? With the contrast of our redeemed life in Christ Jesus.

²¹And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled ²²in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—

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Do not fail to show mercy to others nor to remember the grace by which we were saved.

April 21, 2015